Justin, Trogus, and the "Aetna"

Abstract

IN AN ARTICLE ENTITLED Vergil und published more than a century ago in Rheinisches Museum,' Adolf Sonny convincingly demonstrated that Justin's so-called Epitome of Pompeius Trogus contains a large number of Virgilian reminiscences. Not all of Sonny's examples, it is true, are compelling. To take but two from the start of his list: his contention that Artemisia ... inter primos duces bellum acerrime ciebat is Virgilian (Justin 2.12.24; cf. Aen. 1.541: bela cient; 9.766: Martemque cientes, etc.) will not stand close scrutiny because the expression is more likely to have derived from Livy (cf. 5.37.2: hoste ... bellum ciente; 4.33.3: proelium ciens, etc.);2 and occupare transitum (Justin 2.3.7) is unlikely to be an echo of Aen. 6.424 and 635 (occupat Aeneas aditum), since occupare is frequently used of military seizure (for example, angustias occupare, found in Caesar, Livy, and Curtius).3 Some of Sonny's examples, however, are patently valid, more valid, indeed, than he probably realized, because the use of the Latin PHI disk will now show us that some of them are in fact confined to Justin and Virgil. If an expression does not occur elsewhere, then-barring a hypothetical lost common source-it will have been taken from Virgil. So, for example, the expression dowered with blood (Justin 1.7.19: uxor mariti sanguine dotata) is parallelled only at Aen. 7.318: sanguine Troiano et Rutulo dotabere, virgo;4 the phrase confectum curis (Justin 11.13.1) only at Aen. 6.520: me confectum curis somnoque gravatum; and prima mali labes (Justin 17.1.5: haec illi prima mali labes) only at Aen. 2.97: hinc mihi prima mali labes. Sonny's thesis was subsequently taken up by F. R. D. Goodyear (1984a), who added appreciably to the earlier scholar's examples. Both believe that it was Trogus, a Vocontian Gaul, living in the Augustan period, author of a universal history entitled The Philippic Histories, who was influenced by Virgil, and that these Virgilian reminiscences appear in the epitome of Trogus made by Justin centuries later.5 Justin tells us in his preface that he has produced an anthology of Trogus (velutflorum corpusculum), and so it is not surprising, these scholars argue, that the Virgilian echoes which appeared in the original work will, in places, be preserved intact in the abbreviated version. We shall return to this question at the conclusion.